“I know,” said Camilla, lowering the foot, then raising the other. “It’s also your responsibility to keep yourself safe. Responsibilities clash.”
Nona felt hot and cross.
“It’s hard to feel responsible for the other two people I might be,” she said, knowing she sounded crabby and not knowing how not to. “I don’t know them. But I feel very responsible for Hot Sauce and Honesty and Ruby and Born and even Kevin, and I’ve only got so much time, you know. Maybe the other two people I am would feel incredibly responsible for Hot Sauce and the others too, Cam.”
“Oh, one of them, definitely,” said Camilla. “And maybe the other. I don’t mean you’ve got a responsibility to them. You have a responsibility to me and the Warden and to Pyrrha.”
In desperation, Nona flung herself down on the soft mat on the floor she and Cam had been using for stretches.
“Cam, responsibility just means you can’t ever do anything you think is really important.”
“Yes,” said Cam simply. And: “Let’s stop waiting for Pyrrha and go pick up dinner.”
They walked to the fish shop so that Nona could look longingly at the ocean, and listened to the fishmonger explain the latest about the port riots so that Nona could later translate for Cam. Nice girls with no guns needed to stay inside, urged the fishmonger. The space elevator had gotten breached about an hour ago because too many loyalist soldiers had been rerouted to the barracks siege, and the old workers had busted through with a key card trying to hijack a shuttle off-world. Most of them had been shot, and there were no shuttles there anyway. There were no shuttles anymore.
When Nona relayed this to Camilla, she said: “Hope Pyrrha takes the back roads.”
“Will Pyrrha be okay, Cam?”
“Pyrrha’s a survivor,” said Camilla.
But she let Nona slip her hand into hers and they walked shoulder to shoulder all the way home, with the plastic foam container of spicy rice and oily fish hot and steamy in the crook of Nona’s arm. It had been very cheap; people weren’t eating the harbour fish, because they said that the blue light got into them. They said the blue light got into the air too, and they wore masks for that, though Palamedes said that was nonsense. Cam ate most of the fish and rice as Nona picked at the edges, and then there was all the fruit they hadn’t eaten for afters. Nona’s plate was left still mostly full, despite one genuine effort to eat and two not-so-genuine ones where she faked it.
“You can eat three more mouthfuls, or two and drink some water,” said Camilla inflexibly.
“But I’ve eaten so much today.”
“You ate gruel and a sausage roll.”
“But I’m full, I’m really full.”
“Have you been eating sand again?”
“I haven’t eaten sand in months,” Nona protested, then more truthfully: “Weeks,” and more truthfully than that: “One week.”
Nona eventually took the deal where she drank a glass of water and ate two more mouthfuls; as it turned out though, she never had to eat the second, because the special knock sounded—five short, two long, which they changed often—and Cam unlocked and unbarred the door for Pyrrha.
Pyrrha looked terrible. Her deep skin was powdered with concrete dust and shiny with smoke, splotched with rusty patches on the front that it took Nona a moment to realise were blood. She reeked of petrol and sweat. Cam recognised the red stuff immediately and started trying to check Pyrrha over, tugging at her overalls, her arms—Pyrrha said swiftly, “It’s not mine,” and dropped into one of the chairs at the kitchen table.
Nona got up and went to pour her a glass of ice water from the covered jug. Pyrrha said, “Thanks, Nums,” and drained the whole thing. Nona, fascinated, watched the brown column of her throat move as she swallowed. There was already a fine dark rust of stubble beneath her chin, amid the dust and the dirt, and when Pyrrha caught her looking, she felt there with her hand and said, laughing, “I know, I know … Gideon always had a five o’clock shadow at three o’clock. Sextus, can’t you fix it? If you kick the sebaceous glands back a notch you can interrupt the hair cycle. Quick injection of thanergy below the root’ll freeze the growth.”
Pyrrha’s eyes were hot and shiny and her pupils blown wide. Nona hadn’t even seen Cam and Palamedes switch. Palamedes was busy rolling up one of Pyrrha’s sleeves, examining a slimy patch of scabbing-over blood, and he said briskly: “No thanks. I had the joy of working on a … on a body like yours, the once, and I don’t want to repeat the process for anything smaller than a brain haemorrhage. What hit this forearm?”